What is it with me and lakes?

Lake Tahoe sits square across the Nevada/California border. 22 miles long, 12 miles wide and 1,000 feet deep it sits over 6,000 feet above sea level. Crystal clear waters, framed in a mountain basin surrounded by pine forest, make a spectacular setting. Now my official route says to stay on the US50 around the South of the lake, but as always, the long way around looks way more attractive. Pretty much as soon as I turn North, the views of the rock strewn shore get me itching for a little swimming excursion.

Another day, another dune - but this one had eyes

After I took this video, I settled down to watch the stars come out. The skies are massive out here, there's no light pollution becasue the nearest towns are so far away. About the only familiar constellation I could identify was the big dipper/plough, but the sheer volume of stars is pretty mind blowing. Usually there's too much crap in the atmosphere to pick out much, but when there's so little cloud, it's pretty much a straight line for those ancient photons to hit the back of your eyeballs. The Milky Way is clearly visible as well. As we're edge on to the galaxy, looking through it from the rim of the spiral arm we're in means the sheer density of stars gives a cloudy effect. My poor old Panasonic Lumix FT2 wasn't quite up to the job but plenty of others with better gear can show you what I mean.

Up on the crest of the dune it's very peaceful. It takes about 2 hours for the last of the sun's light to completely vanish from the sky so it's an unhurried process. I was lying flat on my back looking directly up into the stars and enjoying the gradual change in the velvety black night and deepening violet of sundown. So relaxing in fact that I dropped off and fell asleep, waking suddenly at about 2 in the morning.

In the heart of conspiracy country

At 110 million square miles, Nevada is about 20 million square miles bigger than the UK, but only has a 30th of the population, and most of them are concentrated in a few larger cities. No surprise that US government (hereinafter referred to as They) own/manage about 90% of the land and use it as the military's private playground.

Welcome to the Hotel Nevada

I'll say one thing, there's no shortage of rest areas and basic unmanned campsites about in which one can park up and snuggle down. This night's room with a view was at the Hickison Petroglyphs - a site of prehistoric paintings and marked rocks - about 15 miles East of Austin, Nevada.

Flat can be Fabulous

As I left the environs of Salt Lake City, the landscape started to settle down into long open plains and scrub-strewn desert punctuated by fins and fingers of mountain ranges that funnel and squeeze any need for corners out of the roads. Crossing the ancient now (mostly) dried out Sevier Lake bed West of Delta was beautiful as the marshy waters lie still in the windless air, mirroring the skies above.

The Crown Burger - 17/30

The Crown Burger came to my attention via the always entertaining Man vs Food show, in which intrepid food journo Adam Richman travels the US in search of outrageous food challenges and great places to eat (think Extreme Fishing with Robson Green, but with food). Crown Burger is basically a small chain of fast food restaurants around the Salt Lake City area. Their speciality is burger topped with a fistful of hot pastrami...

Zen and the art of Route Planning

Heading west from Moab towards the Pacific, the idea was to follow the "loneliest road in America", the US50, A.K.A. the backbone of America. It snakes its way across what would have been the orginal frontier of the Wild West through prospecting boom and bust towns, classic plains and mountain ranges emerging into suburban California.

The 40 mile detour I'll never regret

Travelling down US191 towards Canyonlands National Park, my eye was drawn to a sign labelled 'Needles Overlook'. The Needles are one of Canyonlands most famous areas, stuffed with fins and spires, so I thought it would be worth a look. When I turned off at the indicated point, I was met with a sign saying Needles Overlook, 20 miles. No prizes for figuring out that's a 40 mile detour there and back...

Things in the distance are bigger than they seem

One thing that keeps hitting me is the sheer scale of this place.

The long way to Moab

One of those occasions when turning the sat nav off (I never tire of shouting at sat nav lady that it's 'calculating root' not 'calculating rowt') and following my nose proved inspired. I should have just sat on US50/I70 freeways and pointed West. Instead I took the long way round, travelling down US141 through a small place called Gateway, then heading across the Paradox Valley into Utah.

From mountains to red rocks

Leaving the high mountains behind after my long trip up the Million Dollar Highway, I arrived in Grand Junction to a different world. The temperature difference was massive for starters. From the air-conditioned comfort of my car I had no idea how hot it was until I got out to get some fuel (body + car). Even late evening when I arrived the heat just hit me like a wall. With no nice shady spots or lakes to hobo camp out in I caved and booked into a motel with air con.

What 2000 feet straight down looks like

Day 3 finds me teetering around the edges of the deepest/narrowest canyon in North America. Black Canyon National Park is just east of Montrose in Colorado. It's hard for the eyes to get a handle on just how far down the floor of the canyon is. At it's deepest it's 2000 feet down. How deep is that? You could get get the Empire State building in and still have 500 feet of headroom....

More Photos on Flickr here

Million Dollar Highway

A number of legends exist around how this stretch of US550 came to be known as the Million Dollar Highway. There's a huge history of gold and silver mining in the area so one story has it that men who built the roads linking the crucial mining towns of Silverton and Ouray discovered lumps of precious metals along the way and made themselves millionaires. The other story is more closely related to how perilous the road itself is to travel given the twists, turns, height and consequences of getting it wrong. A visiting VIP was heard to remark that "you won't get me going back down that road for a million dollars".

The True Grit Burger - 13/25

The original True Grit featuring old bandy legs himself was filmed in these here parts, so eating lunch at the bar of the honorific True Grit cafe in Ridgway surrounded by images of Mr Wayne seemed too good to miss.

Who needs a laundromat when you have a lake?

Lake Haviland, about 20 miles North of Durango was my second overnighter and proved to be a brilliant little spot for some swimming.

The Boss Hogg Burger - 15/30

Driving through the resort community of Pagosa Springs (most people who live here have 2 or 3 homes) my eye was drawn to an establishment going by the name of Boss Hog's Restaurant & Saloon. Walls were covered in dead heads and antlers and the menu comes as faux antique olde worlde newspaper. Locally reared Burger + Bacon avec Frings et BBQ sauce was duly ordered and, as I'm now coming to expect, arrived deconstructed with the salad to one side. Usual condiments present.

40 miles in a straight line

Next stop after the Pikes Peak was the Great Dunes National Park, nestling in the San Luis Valley - a desert basin between fingers of the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountains. After the eye candy of mountains and massive vistas where 1 inch on the horizon equates to 38 miles, hitting the desert plains was educational.

A scholarly history of the mighty burger

The learned Guardian newspaper has weighed in on the topic of the mighty burger. This great article traces the burger's modern roots all the way back to the late 1800's and a mittel-european love for steak tartare...

What a difference a day makes

From this:

To this:

The Cherry Cricket Burger - 19/30

So, the scoring begins. Back in the UK, when a bar describes itself as 'American Style', The Cherry Cricket is what they have in mind. Almost Cheers-esque in it's good time crowd, decor and simple pleasures. As recommended by Man vs Food, I went for the standard 1/2lb burger and partnered it with Frings (Fries + Onion rings) for just under $12.

Leave the baggage behind

 

The original plan was to go uni-bag, take hand luggage only to avoid baggage handling hassles and waiting around. Okay, so I caved and ended up with two bags, but technically one of them counts as a handbag (BA allows a handbag or laptop bag up to 45cm x 36xm x 20cm in addition to carry-on hand luggage of 56cm x 45cm x 24cm).

My tesselation skills (which are astounding, nay almost magical in their application) resulted in a nicely pared down basic kit:

Calibration's what you need

So, in order to calibrate The System and give a useful benchmark to refer back to, I visited my local Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Milton Keynes.

They have many fine burgers on the menu featuring such specialities as The Jamaican (mango and ginger relish), The Wellington (horseradish, rocket and mushroom) and the signature Kiwi Burger (not made of small ground dwelling rare birds but piled with beetroot, egg, pineapple, aged cheddar, salad, mayo and relish).

So that I wouldn't be distracted by exotics, I plumped for a basic BBQ burger and 'small' fries. Usual price would be just under £10, but thanks to a discount voucher site I got all in for a very reasonable £5.95

There is no spoon but there is a scoring system

Humans are largely creatures of habit and partition. We like to know what's what, who's who and where things are. Some of us even invest a little energy where the real juice is, in 'why'. Labelling and boxing up stuff helps our brains model and process information quickly. Without that ability the sheer volume of input streaming across our cortex into the thalamus would utterly overwhelm any ability to respond rationally or fast enough to make a difference.

Soundtrack suggestions please

There are times in your life when your context suddenly and perfectly meshes with a tune that's playing. Might be in the car, in your earphones whilst at the supermarket (You know who you Mr Miles Davis does Tesco) or setting your generic mp3 player or online streaming music service to shuffle and getting blown out of your socks when an awesome intro kicks in.

Roadtrips are built for tunes to mark the miles and as my steed for the trip comes ready and willing with a USB input, it would be rude not to stuff it to within an inch of it's life with choonage.

Now I know there are several driving songs compilations out there, but that would be too easy, so I'm looking for suggestions for tracks or albums that fit my theme or route.

There's at least 100 hours of driving to do so, at 4 mins a song, that's 1500 tracks to get through. Post your comments and suggestions below...

The map is not the territory

So where to begin a 4,500 mile road trip? I thought about doing the straight East West route following US-20 from New York to Portland but thanks to the magic of google maps and street view, you can get a pretty good picture of what the scenery might be like and unless you're a (modern) history buff or dig the East Coast scene, it's kind of short on the spectacular for my taste.

To go chasing mountains and landscape you have to head West to the North American parts of the American Cordillera (read all about it in the riveting Lithotectonic terrain map of the North American Cordillera by Silberling, N.J. et al. 1992) , comprising the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, Cascades and Coast ranges of Oregon, Washington and California.

Simple questions with far reaching answers

There I was, balancing the books one evening, all pleased with myself at the nice little nest egg I'd built up for a rainy day when the thought suddenly popped into my head: what are you actually saving for? You've got enough squirrelled away to cover yourself for a few months off work here even if it does rain later.

Which led to a relatively simple question: so if I don't have to go to work for 5 months, what could I do?